Activities // European Exhibition

What would happen if? The choice to build an alternative future

CreArt exhibition 2020 | Aveiro, Museu de Aveiro / Santa Joana

From December 5th to January 24th

Our entire life is full of what if’s, of remorse and regrets. From a personal and individual point of view, everyone wonders what would have happened if, what kind of different life could have been lived, would it have changed for better or for worse? Being able to make true and consistent decisions is perhaps one of the greatest difficulties faced in everyday life.

What would happen if? The choice to build an alternative future is a multidisciplinary project that encourages participating artists and collectives to explore the historical, contemporary and social facts that construct the contemporary realities of their places of residence. The exhibition is a creative territory that works as a multi-layered science-fiction novel, freely depicting possible alternative futures, natural phenomena and individual-collective memories. History is written through moments of rupture with the past that result in changes in our ways of living. Yet, rather than being a critical revision of history, the exhibition aims to formulate new histories.

The exhibition was conceived before the covid-19 pandemic crisis. Quoting Franco “Bifo” Berardi: “The ongoing crisis is not a real crisis. It is a RESET. It is a matter of turning off the machine and turning it on again, after a while. Yet, when we turn it back on, we can decide to make it work as before, running the risk of finding ourselves living the same nightmare all over again—or we can decide to reprogram it, according to science, consciously and sensitively.”[1] The word crisis originates from the ancient Greek verb krino meaning to discern, to judge, to evaluate. It is still necessary to think a reset as something dramatic– a reset is a shock and it affects the most disadvantage part of the society. However, we should evaluate the positive face of every crisis and keep an eye on the if that could change before our gaze and after our reality. Today, reflecting on all the possible if’s becomes even more crucial in order to understand what went wrong, for how long this frightening situation will continue and what will come next.

Curator | Pietro Della Giustina

Associate curator | Luca Gennati

Artists

Aiste Ambrazeviciute [Kaunas]

Anti-cool [Liverpool]

Bernard [Rouen]

Darko Aleksovski [Skopje]

Jean Roméo Kamptchouang [Clermont-Ferrand]

Jorge Peligro [Valladolid]

OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression) [Skopje]

Polymorphe [Rouen]

Rodrigo Malvar [Aveiro]

Sarah Vigier & Valentine Traverse [Clermont-Ferrand]

Serena Grassi [Lecce]

Stefano Serretta [Genoa]

Szymon Popielec [Lublin]

Vesna Salamon [Zagreb]

[1] Franco “Bifo” Berardi, RESET, Chronicles of the psycho-deflation #2: “Normality must not return.”, in NERO editions, March 2020 [DOI: www.neroeditions.com/reset/, consulted on 16 April 2020].

You can find in our Youtube Channel the following videos about the exhibition. Opening, Guided Tour and a teaser about the installation. Check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/user/CreArtEurope